This book addresses the question of public response to civil war through changes in the representation of the female body in the popular print art of mid-1800s Japan. Close reading of the presentation of the female body in ukiyo-e woodblock prints of the Bakumatsu era reveals a discourse of national anxieties expressed and mediated through popular imagery. Though each genre of ukiyo-e engages with the image of the female body in its own way, an overall trend is discernible in the use of the image of the female body to articulate and attempt to treat the causes and affects of national anxieties during civil war.